In a variety of consumer electronics and computers, solid state drives incorporating non-volatile memories (NVMs) are frequently replacing or supplementing conventional rotating hard disk drives for mass storage. These non-volatile memories may include one or more flash memory devices, the flash memory devices may be logically divided into blocks, and each of the blocks may be further logically divided into addressable pages.
However, flash memory or the like are susceptible to data retention problems. Data retention is the ability of a memory cell or page to retain the stored data over a period of time in an unbiased state. Data retention time can be affected by various factors such as program/erase (P/E) cycles and operating temperature. In general, data retention time decreases as the number of P/E cycles increases. Operating the memory in elevated temperature for an extended period can also reduce data retention time.